Anybody going to IBC?
www.ibc.org

Won't be attending, last year was visit number 13 for me, and it turned out to be an unpleasant experience:-(.

Not this year either. Hollywood is still recovering fron the WGA strike and now that SAG is working open ended without a contract, things are pretty slow. Not a good time to ask for a $6000+ junket.

Not this year either. Hollywood is still recovering fron the WGA strike and now that SAG is working open ended without a contract, things are pretty slow. Not a good time to ask for a $6000+ junket.
I'll be there. And since I live not that far away it costs me ~750$ total.

I will go there, i live 30 km away from it :)

I will go there, i live 30 km away from it :)

:)
You can find me most of the time in the big auditorium ogling 4K material and other goodies. In the first few rows, of course. I want to see all the resolution they can throw at me.

:)
You can find me most of the time in the big auditorium ogling 4K material and other goodies. In the first few rows, of course. I want to see all the resolution they can throw at me.
Hmm, perhaps send me a pm when you will be there if you are interested in an meet and greet.

Hmm, perhaps send me a pm when you will be there if you are interested in an meet and greet.
I'll be at the Arri session and the Bollywood session for sure. RED too.

Little IBC report coming.

ok decided not to go due to overload in the work on my desk so I am eager to hear about your reports

Little IBC report
-------------------

I spent 2 days this year since one day is not enough to catch the interesting presentations in the on-site big auditorium/cinema and
walk through all the halls as well, stop at times and have a nice little conversation about this and that.

Auditorium presentations I saw:

(Screenings with Christie 2K DLP except where indicated 4K Sony projection. I was sitting one screen height away or so to not miss any details (second row)). From there 2K pixels are easily visible.)
- Arri: Arri screened example clips from productions made with their gear. 16mm, 35mm and D21. The 16mm material looked surprisingly good, pretty sharp and not excessively grainy. Emulsion progress makes today's 16mm look close to yesterday's 35mm. They also showed DNRed 16mm processed by some Canadian company. I looked closely to see the usual distracting artifacts. But I saw none. They nailed it for this clip. The first time I was happy with this kind of processing. At least in this example. Some Arri rep also told me later it was the first time they saw degrained 16mm that looked this good. Now, if we only could get this quality for Blu Ray mastering in the cases where DNR is approved and asked for by film makers. The D21 clips were cut too fast to say much but they looked good.
- Christie: The session was about what makes a good cinema reference quality projector. There has been progress with making 3D projection brighter than in the past. A 3D example was shown. More about 3D later.
- SI-2K camera: This presentation was about the SI-2K digital cinema camera. Some clips were shown and technical details explained. It's a 2K camera, not 4K. The clips looked nice, but not much different from other 2K/1080p cameras on the market.
- RED 1 camera: The RED shows are in the third year at IBC. Now it has become very clear that RED is neither a scam/vaporware nor just another camera. Last year they showed the Peter Jackson short. This year they brought a demo reel of several minutes. 4K projection, of course. Clips from feature films, commercials, shorts... There were jaw dropping shots in there where I can only think of very clean 70mm to compare it to. This was actually Beyond HD/2K, and very visibly so. We are in for a treat when the first Red 4K films are released on 4K projectors (look out for http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1183251/ and http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0448011/ among others). I want this in 4K at home, definitely. Meanwhile RED marches on with better sensors in 2009, plus a 5K camera and a 3K camera everyone can buy who can afford a medium home cinema. 3K for <= 3000$ are announced! Another disruptive move from RED that will turn things upside down.
- Bollywood Meets Hollywood: A panel discussion with some clips from old and very new Bollywood films. The main subject were the growing connections between the 2 Woods with Indian companies investing in Hollywood and vice versa, using now the same technology (4K DIs are now nothing special in India!) with India rapidly catching up technically and financially.
- 3D Live Demo: As a world premiere there was the first live 3D HD transmission from Hollywood to Europe featuring a live interview with Jeffrey Katzenberg sitting in front of a Koi pond. He talked about 3D of course which he believes is the third big technology leap in motion pictures since they were invented (sound and color the other two). He even thinks in the not so distant future only 3D films will be shot same like sound films made silent films quickly obsolete in the early 30s. We were shown live 3D clips from "Kung Fu Panda" and "Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)" (hilarious clip!). After the interview came more clips such as concert clips.
My impression of 3D was ambivalent. All clips I saw had distracting image quality problems due to cross talk from the supposedly cheap glasses that were handed out. If the cross talk problems can be eliminated 100% I'm for the system if used wisely (avoid exaggerated effects and logical problems at the edges of the screen that confuse the brain). As I saw it the cross talk and probably other issues made the pictures often look fuzzy, undefined, confusing and lacking the quality we expect from (2D) 1080p HD. Properly done this should be killer though in a bat cave kind of home cinema where the room disappears and only a floating image exists (yes you want super blacks with 3D material as any gray bars and visible room parts interfere with the floating illusion).

Notable points from the exhibition:
- 4K monitors are becoming more common. Several brands had one on display. When fed with 4K material they have amazing detail. Prices are very high, though (>= 25000$).
- NHK Super Hi Vision demo: This is 8K we are talking about projected with 2 4K projectors (I think). Stupendous detail but nonetheless not nearly as satisfactory to me as 4K material from RED. Why? Because the 8K camera is a video camera and not a digital cinema camera. There were sharpening halos visible at times and the contrast was not film like but typical HD cam. 8K makes sense once you have mastered great quality in 4K. Moving on before that gives not better results. 8K with tomorrow's RED quality = digital IMAX. That's worth developing.
- BBC motion studies: BBC showed examples shot at 300fps to demonstrate that the TV system of the (remote) future should not be happy with 50 or 60fps, or even 100 or 120fps, but aim for 300 instead. At 300 frames even fast ping pong play and juggling can be rendered with almost no motion blur on the balls/objects. Interesting. But either we have a systme where multiple frame rates are allowed or we need a multiple of 24fps. Interpolation and pull downs have no place in a modern system that must be able to play our >100 years old movie heritage.

And that's all folks.

mhafner
Did you learn if NHK was going to develop 8k using three of the new JVC high contrast 8k panels instead of the current setup with 4 4k panels?

Do you hear any talk about Sony going 8k with sxrd?

Any time frame for 4k dlp?

Thanks for the report!

here some more infos about the 8k demo.

use the fish to translate.

http://maniac.cybermediaverlag.de/audiovisiontest/MODx/index.php?id=802

there is no single pr. so far can do it.

max. is 4k.

mhafner
Did you learn if NHK was going to develop 8k using three of the new JVC high contrast 8k panels instead of the current setup with 4 4k panels?
Do you hear any talk about Sony going 8k with sxrd?
Any time frame for 4k dlp?
Thanks for the report!

Don't know about JVC or Sony and 8K. Anyway, they better get their 4K done properly first before thinking about 8K. 4K DLP is coming but when, nobody could say. At the latest when Sony/JVC get too much market share with their 4K models.

Well there are two fronts of development.
1 Mature 4k Digital Cinema projectors
2 Super HiVison / UHDTV at 8k which is a more long term project.

Item 1
We can only hope Sony gets their 4k good enough to force TI out with 4k DLP. There has been hope that Sony´s sxrd will close the contrast gap to JVC´s high contrast d-ila technology. If Sony can do just that and apply it to 4k for digital cinema I think their competitiveness will increase.

Item 2
NHK will naturally go to 3 8k d-ila panels for Super HiVision. I guess a new true 8k projections system could be shown within a year.

However we might be best served by going with higher fps. 300fps sounds like a waste of bandwidth. Why not settle for 120fps with a future standard.

Projectors aside, I think the the important thing was the fact that they were compressing a 7680 X 4320 pixel 24Gbit/sec signal to 600Mb/s !!
They were using 'Dirac' video compression using wavelets which the BBC developed and is open source?, I think or at least not minding if everybody else jumps in.

I am sorry I didn't check the forum to see if any one else had been going to the IBC.

Dirac is not open source, but offers a free license. Deliberate decission by BBC at the time. Wonder how the AVC H.264 compression is coming along Ateme garnered lots of publicity last year with two or three publicity runs.

Ohlson, Wolfgang, the JVC 8K panel has been launched a year ago, does make one wonder why it hasn't been put into the experimental projector. At least these days they are using two 3 channel 4K projectors, instead of one 4 channel (2x green) projector.

donaldk
Check out jvc press release archive. There is info on what they would show at CEATEC. They are showing a prototype 8k 1.1M:1 projector!